The Riots

Debate between Graham Stringer and Nick Raynsford

Thursday 13th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Raynsford]

I see that I am not succeeding. Will hon. Members please accept that I wish to be brief? I do not want to take up too much time because other hon. Members want to contribute. I have said as much as I wish to on that particular subject, and I will move on because I have other points to stress.

As I said, there was no indication to suggest that the rioters came from one particular location. However, the hon. Member for Croydon Central, and his colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks), might be amused at one potentially misleading piece of evidence that I gathered quite early on. I came back from my holiday on 9 August, and one of the first things I did was ask my borough commander for evidence of who was responsible for the disturbances and where they came from. Having checked the people in the cells in Woolwich, he told me that a disproportionate number appeared to come from Croydon. There is a simple explanation for that. Croydon is not full of criminals who converged on Woolwich; rather, their presence reflects the fact that the riots in Croydon occurred earlier in the evening. Once the cells in Croydon were full, the police—quite properly, given Met procedures—used custody suites in neighbouring areas, and cells in Woolwich were used to accommodate a number of people from Croydon.

That is an important lesson in the potential misuse of statistics, and I cite it for that reason. One should be careful to dig down beyond initial, superficial statistics, and understand what lies behind them. I hope that the hon. Member for Croydon Central will forgive me for casting that aspersion on his constituents.

Let me turn to the immediate response to the riots. The situation on Tuesday 9 August was transformed by the deployment of large numbers of police officers in Woolwich and the other parts of the capital affected, and in other areas of the country. Throughout the day, I was bombarded with texts predicting all sorts of problems and threats to various places. I was told that the O2 Centre and Greenwich park were to be attacked, and that various other landmarks in the area would be targeted. That was a measure of the electronic media world in which we live; communications are fast and such rumours can spread quickly. However, although the rumour mill was working overtime, in reality none of those places was trashed or attacked. The presence of large numbers of police completely transformed the situation, and on 9 August, and on subsequent days, there was calm in London. It was not calm elsewhere, and I am aware of problems in other cities, but in London the deployment of the 16,000 police officers, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, had the crucial impact of deterring further trouble. I hope that the review being conducted by the Metropolitan police will reflect on that and make appropriate recommendations.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is being generous with his time. The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) made a point about the immediate response to the riots being inadequate in terms of police numbers. Those of us who represent constituencies in Manchester and Salford were particularly annoyed that not only were police numbers inadequate to respond to the disturbances on that Tuesday evening, but 100 of our best trained officers had been sent to London. That was one of two major mistakes. The second was that our riot police—in Manchester, the tactical aid unit—are geared up not for highly mobile rioters, but to defend space and property. They need retraining for a different kind of riot.

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, and that issue needs to be considered fully in the evaluation of what happened and in the police review. I hope that the review by the Metropolitan police will reflect on the deployment of appropriate numbers of officers with suitable skills and the ability to cope with such situations, and ensure that we are never again exposed to the risk of a rerun of the events of 8 August.

In Woolwich, and throughout London, we saw the determination of large numbers of our fellow citizens to reclaim their streets. In Greenwich, the local authority, police and other emergency services acted swiftly and efficiently to clear the mess, shore up and secure buildings damaged by fire and looting, and get back to normal as soon as possible. In Woolwich last weekend, we were proud to welcome the 2nd Battalion, the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment on parade in General Gordon square as a clear symbol that Woolwich is back to business as normal. I hasten to add that the military was not there to enforce law and order; it was a purely ceremonial parade by a regiment that is based in Woolwich, and we are proud to have it with us.

What about the longer-term implications of the disturbances? I am not one of those people who fears that we may experience more riots in the immediate future. Apart from the obvious lessons to be learned about police numbers, we should reflect, as the hon. Member for Croydon Central has done, on the effectiveness of CCTV. Those images played a hugely important role in identifying many of those involved in the riots and providing evidence to support prosecution.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that those who are nervous about the civil liberties implications of the use of CCTV should reflect on that position. CCTV has played a crucial role over the past two and a half months, and continues to do so. The certainty of conviction is a powerful deterrent, and all those who have seen the number of people identified, charged, brought to trial and convicted as a result of that evidence should reflect on the likelihood of the same thing happening again should the disturbances be repeated.